ORNL duo elected AAS fellows

Two researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory — Sean Campbell Smith and Alexei Sokolov — have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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By Special to The Oak Ridger

Oakridger - Oak Ridge, TN

By Special to The Oak Ridger

Posted Dec. 4, 2012 at 7:01 PM

By Special to The Oak Ridger
Posted Dec. 4, 2012 at 7:01 PM

OAK RIDGE

Two researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory — Sean Campbell Smith and Alexei Sokolov — have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Fellow is the highest honor bestowed by the AAAS, the world's largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science.

Smith, director of the Department of Energy's Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, came to ORNL in 2011 from the University of Queensland in Australia, where he was the director of the Centre for Computational Molecular Science. According to an ORNL news release, he was cited by his AAAS peers for "distinguished contributions to the field of computational and theoretical chemistry, including fundamental advances in unimolecular rate theory and exploration of novel functionalities in nanomaterials."

Smith is a native of New Zealand and received his doctorate in theoretical chemistry from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

Sokolov has been a University of Tennessee-ORNL Governor's Chair for Polymer Science and researcher in ORNL's Chemical Sciences Division since 2009. He was cited for “distinguished contributions to the field of dynamics of soft materials, including polymers, glass-forming liquids, and biological macromolecules.”

He received his master’s degree in physics from Novosibirsk State University in Russia and his doctorate and postdoctoral certification from the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Several ORNL-affiliated University of Tennessee researchers were also elected through the university:

• Howard Hall, UT-ORNL Governor’s Chair for Global Nuclear Security, for distinguished contributions to the field of nuclear security, particularly for the interdisciplinary applications of science, technology, policy and education to this field;

• Gary Sayler, Beaman Distinguished University Professor of Microbiology and researcher in the Joint Institute of Biological Sciences, for distinguished research, teaching and service contributions in microbial ecology and environmental biotechnology, particularly for development of microbial biosensors and molecular understanding of environmental hydrocarbon degradation; and

• Pengcheng Dai, UT professor of physics and researcher in the Neutron Sciences Directorate for distinguished contributions to the understanding of the magnetic properties in copper and iron-based high temperature superconductors, heavy fermion metals and colossal magnetoresistance manganites.

The new fellows will be honored at the AAAS annual meeting in February.

CNMS is one of the five DOE Nanoscale Science Research Centers supported by the DOE Office of Science, premier national user facilities for interdisciplinary research at the nanoscale. Together the NSRCs comprise a suite of complementary facilities that provide researchers with state-of-the-art capabilities to fabricate, process, characterize and model nanoscale materials, and constitute the largest infrastructure investment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. The NSRCs are located at DOE's Argonne, Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge and Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories. For more information about the DOE NSRCs, visit the website, http://science.energy.gov/bes/suf/user-facilities/nanoscale-science-research-centers/.

Page 2 of 2 - UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Office of Science. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit the website, http://science.energy.gov/.